Measuring Attitudes Toward Nursing Safety Violations.

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Patient Safety
• Psychology

Background:

• Understanding attitudes towards nursing safety violations is crucial for improving patient care.
• Implicit and explicit attitudes may influence adherence to safety protocols.
• Previous research has not fully explored these attitudes in nursing populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To measure implicit and explicit attitudes toward major nursing safety violations.
• To compare these attitudes between nursing students and experienced patient safety nurses.
• To investigate the relationship between attitudes and intention to violate safety protocols.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to assess implicit attitudes.
• Employed self-reported questionnaires to measure explicit attitudes.
• Recruited two groups: nursing students (n=71) and patient safety nurses (n=38).

Main Results:

• Nursing students showed quicker reaction times but no significant difference in error trials for safety violations compared to general behaviors (Experiment 1).
• Explicit attitudes correlated with intention to violate safety protocols in nursing students (Experiment 1).
• Patient safety nurses demonstrated significant differences in both reaction time and error trials, indicating a firm implicit attitude (Experiment 2).

Conclusions:

• Patient safety nurses possess a more established implicit attitude towards safety violations than nursing students.
• Despite differences in implicit attitudes, the study suggests attitudes may not directly predict actual violations in nursing practice.
• Further research is needed to understand the complex relationship between attitudes and behavior in patient safety.